


How Do You Go About Making Your Amends To The Dead

by alyyks



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Canon-Typical Violence, Death Watch (Star Wars), F/M, Force-Sensitive Leia Organa, Mandalorian, Not Beta Read, Not Canon Compliant - Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Other, Past Leia Organa/Han Solo, Post-Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, Post-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Quote: The Force works in mysterious ways, Time Skips, Time Travel, past Boba Fett/Ailyn Vel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-18 15:18:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13102956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alyyks/pseuds/alyyks
Summary: There were old plays—therehad beenold plays, on Alderaan, in High Aurebesh, that were part of the education of all Alderaanians. They had been the core of all acting troops, played and repeated at holy days, at court, at school. Some of the sentences, once translated, had become expressions and part of regular speech, and some of those had trickled to the Alliance and the troops during the rebellion against the Empire.Misery acquaints a man with strange bed-fellowshad been a favorite, as much a swear as a realistic view of the alliances within the Alliance.Leia Organa had not expected to ever take that saying so literally.





	How Do You Go About Making Your Amends To The Dead

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FettsOnTop (GTFF)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GTFF/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Random Boba Fett/Leia Organa Prompts](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11289345) by [FettsOnTop (GTFF)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GTFF/pseuds/FettsOnTop). 



> Merry Christmas, FettsOnTop, take your plot bunnies back!
> 
> Unbeta-ed, and inspired by Chapter 7 of the Random Boba Fett/Leia Organa Prompt. Title from A Perfect Circle's "The Noose."

There were old plays—there _had been_ old plays, on Alderaan, in High Aurebesh, that were part of the education of all Alderaanians. They had been the core of all acting troops, played and repeated at holy days, at court, at school. Some of the sentences, once translated, had become expressions and part of regular speech, and some of those had trickled to the Alliance and the troops during the rebellion against the Empire. _Misery acquaints a man with strange bed-fellows_ had been a favorite, as much a curse as a realistic view of the alliances within the Alliance.  
  
Leia Organa had not expected to ever take that saying so literally.  
  
The man lying between her and the rest of the tent was possibly one of the strangest bed-fellows she’d ever had to deal with. The situation, as it was, was by far the strangest she had ever been in, and she had been so far powerless to change much about it.  
  
Leia Organa dealt poorly with powerlessness.  
  
She turned to her side to try to find a comfortable position to go back to sleep, knees tucked behind her strange bedfellow’s, her belly touching his back. He slept armored, like most of the free beings in the camp, and the metal was cool to the touch, even through her clothing. She felt her child kick at the move, then settle, the little bubble of warmth she translated as his presence waxing and weaning as he dreamed. It still wasn’t a good position for her.  
  
“Can’t sleep?” Her strange bedfellow’s whisper was just enough for her ears to hear, covered by the faint snores of the other sleepers in the tent.  
  
“Can’t get comfortable,” she replied. At seven and a half months pregnant, there weren’t many ways she could get comfortable enough to sleep, especially when sleeping on a rolled-out pad lying on the floor in a tent, especially here and then. She had a hard time imagining herself further along; she possibly would have to make a cross on comfort and sleep altogether by the time she reached nine months pregnant.  
  
She hoped she’d be back where she belonged—where they both belonged—before she’d have to deliver her son.  
  
The man lying between her and the entrance to the tent turned to lie on his back, then turned his head for his faceplate to face her. His right arm was extended away from his side. She could tuck herself there on her side, head on his shoulder, belly resting on his side to get some relief from the constant weight. They had slept like this a few times already, as it sold their cover story a bit more. She hadn’t asked, to sleep like this, or why he offered.  
  
She moved, his arm a solid weight at her back. If she could touch skin she had no doubt it’d be fever-warm in contrast to the cool metal he lived in. She breathed in, breathed out, tried to calm her racing mind, felt his lungs moving with his own breaths, and sleep crept back.  
  
Leia Organa hoped she wouldn’t have to deliver her son fifty years in the past in a Death Watch campbase on Concord Dawn with Boba Fett for sole ally.  
  
+  
  
Here was how they came to be here: neither of them knew. Leia had gone with a small security detail to the Ruins on Kalevala for a private meeting with what was left of the Council of Neutral Planets’ higher officers, only half a dozen people counting their guards. It was supposed to be a first step toward opening discussions to join the New Republic.  
  
Fett had been there for a bounty. It hadn’t been one of the politicians, but one of the guards, and that was the extant of the information he provided.  
  
Next thing she knew, Leia had stumbled into a dusty path that hadn’t been where she had been in a moment before, then she was grabbed by someone she didn’t see or sense and she was thrown to her knees in a circle of armored mandalorians. Before anyone could raise a hand against her, Fett had stabbed one of them in the back and strode to stand at her side. Leia hadn’t recognized Fett immediately: he wasn’t the same armor, or even the same colors. However his presence, and his voice, were the same— she knew she knew the person standing next to her, without being able to put a name to them. The name he gave to the apparent leader of the now-wary circle was Lucky Vel. None of the mandalorians had dared laugh at what was clearly a nickname. The one Fett had stabbed laid on the ground, slowly bleeding out.  
  
There weren’t many options from there for a well-dressed seven-months pregnant woman with a Core accent. She didn’t know why Fett had chosen to rope her into his act from the beginning, but she followed his lead. He had been the only one to seem to know who those people were, and where they were. She didn’t know enough mando’a to follow the conversation that followed his bloody introduction. She knew enough to understand she knew him, he was protecting her, and that she needed that protection.  
  
Following his lead until she knew what was going on didn’t keep her from seething at him once they were out of ear shot. He had grabbed her by the arm to exit the circle, keeping his body between the armors and her.  
  
“What are you doing?” she asked.  
  
“What did _you_ do? Do you have any idea where we are?” He pushed her into a tall tent on the right. Two women, one Twi’lek and the other Iridonian Zabrak, looked up from their work table at the intrusion. They left the tent through the back immediately after seeing that the person behind Leia was wearing armor.  
  
From the long table in the center and the open chests on the sides revealing flours and dried meats, this was a camp kitchen. The women hadn’t been wearing armor. They had been wearing collars.  
  
Leia spun around to face the man at her back. He took his helmet off, revealing a man she had never seen without it but in holos. She was sure now it was Boba Fett. The few days she had had to spend in Jabba’s palace had been enough to get used to the quiet man who stood with his back to the wall and chatted with the dancers and singers like he knew them well and valued their opinions. His presence was unmistakable.  
  
Now that she knew Luke was Force-Sensitive and her brother, and—as much as she didn’t like to think about it—that she probably was strongly Force-Sensitive too, she had probably unconsciously used the Force to get a feel for the presences of all the beings in that horrible palace, Fett included.  
  
“How should I know!” she hissed back. The situation was clear as mud, but it didn’t take much of a strategic mind to know she was in a bad position—that _they_ were in a bad position. “I don’t know enough mandalorian to know what was said, and last I know I was at the Ruins on Kalevala!”  
  
“I told them you belonged to me and that the next one to touch you would wish I had only stabbed them.”  
  
“What?” She was going to jump to his throat if he didn’t start making sense. Possibly she was going to do just that, if only to satisfy her anger. How dare he—  
  
“You’re too well dressed for this area, and you don’t speak Mando’a. They were not going to sit still and listen to you be diplomatic at them.” He gritted his teeth. “I was at the Ruins too. Next I’m here, with you. I don’t have the Force, you do.”  
  
“How— what do that have to do with anything?” How could he have even known that?  
  
He held a part of the tent flap open. Beyond the camp, a mountain range rose, blue and gold in the fading light of the day. “Not the Ruins. Not even Kalevala.” He let the flap fall down. “Did you notice the blasters?”  
  
She went through the make and models she had seen worn by the Mandalorians. They had been old, the kind the Alliance had been able to get in bulk early on until maintaining them was too expensive, here in excellent shape for their age. Too excellent—and there had been no other types in sight. Leia narrowed her eyes. “You know where we are.”  
  
“I know _when_ , too,” he said.  
  
She caught on to his meaning immediately. “Time-travel. You’re trying to tell me we went back in time, and on another planet, and somehow you think the Force is involved.” She took a deep breath, put her hands on her belly to feel the little bubble of warmth of her child’s life for reassurance. “This is impossible.”  
  
Boba Fett merely looked at her.  
  
Another breath, and then she squared her shoulders and looked right back at him. “Where are we, who are those people, what’s the plan from there.”  
  
He looked at her for a moment, brown-gold eyes sharp, then he nodded.  
  
“This is Concord Dawn, back end of the Mandalorian system, a good fifty years ago. And we’re right in the middle of a Death Watch camp.”  
  
Leia took this in, added it to the rest of the elements she had gathered by herself. Soldiers with little to no internal discipline and no direct line of command, kept slaves—or prisoners, but Leia thought slaves sadly more likely— respected displays of force or, at least, the rule of the strongest, wore mandalorian armor  
  
“Can you give me anything more on Death Watch?”  
  
“The name in Mando’a is _Kyr'tsad_. Do you know of Mon Cal’s euselachians? Usually larger than a human, lives in water only. They can find a drop of blood in a thousand cubic meter of liquid, find its origin, and rend a body to pieces in less than a minute, doesn’t matter if it’s prey or another euselachian. That’s _Kyr'tsad_. The first weakness they see is enough to destroy. They are like—acrididas bugs, devouring without making anything, consumers. They are destructive chaos, and in that chaos they are stagnation, _arasuum'la_. They’ll never be anything other than what they are and they reveal in it.” He took a breath. “ _Dar’manda_ , the lot of them.”  
  
Leia didn’t know the Mando’a words Fett had used, but that last one had the strength of a judgment. The whole tirade had more emotions than she had thought the man capable of expressing.  
  
“We’ve been away too long,” Fett said. “We’re either with them or dead. If we’re with them, we could warn the places they raid.” His presence, the feeling of his words changed on his last sentence. It was enough for Leia’s instincts to push her into a decision. That, and the way her child somersaulted inside her.  
  
“Let’s get back out there and talk our way into their organization better than you’ve already done.”  
  
“What do you expect to do?”  
  
“I survived the Imperial Senate. I know people and alliances. So.” She wiped the red dust from her knees, her belly in the way. Her outfit—white, for Alderaan’s Royal Family and the people she still represented—would not stay white much longer here. She might need to find a way to replace it with something that would let her fade into the background. Fett would have to be the facade of their little alliance, both because he knew the language and could command the acceptance of Death Watch, Kyr'tsad, faster than she would be able to. “Do you want my help taking then down from the inside or not?”


End file.
